Category Archives: Challenging Words of the Week

Challenging Word of the WeeK: objurgate

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Objurgate
(OB jur gate) verb

To objurgate is to denounce harshly, to upbraid vigorously, to berate sharply, to reproach in no uncertain terms, to give ’em hell. Objurgate is from Latin objurgatus, past participle of objurgare (to scold, chide, reprove), based on prefix ob– (against) plus jurgare (to rebuke), based in turn on jur-, stem of jus (law, right) plus agere (to drive). Objurgation (ob jur GAY shun) is the noun, and a geat deal of it is heard at the United Nations (which is given as an example of oxymoron in another part of this book).

My example: I was going to go into how the Harry Reid, et al, think objurgate and obfuscate are the same thing. Then I realized that more expressive examples of admirable objurgation can be found over at my friend Andy’s blog.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Challenging Word of the WeeK: nescience

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Nescience
(NESH uns, -ee, uns) noun

Nescience is ignorance, lack of knowledge. It comes from Late Latin nescientia, based on the prefix ne- (not) plus Latin scienta (knowledge), which gave us our noun science. Nescience is one of a group of words composed of a prefix plus –science; omniscience (om NISH uns — universal knowledge); prescience (PREE shee uns, -shuns, PRESH ee uns, PRESH uns — foreknowledge). All these words have related adjectives: nescient (ignorant), omniscient (all-knowing), prescient (clairvoyant, prophetic). It is the nescience of the masses that permits the rise of demagogues. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Act 1, Scene 1), the Tribune Marullus, disgusted with the nescient common throng, calls them “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things…” In these days when reading has so much given way to sitting in front of the boob tube (awake or asleep), nescience is fast becoming epidemic.

My example: Pardon me if I borrow from Will Shakespeare, but I think it would be fitting for the Tribune Marullus to address the nescience of the StarTribune’s editorial staff: “You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things…” Actually, we perhaps need a new word. If omniscient means all-knowing, then couldn’t omnescient refer to people who just think they know it all?

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Update:

MBMc at Port McClellan offers What Is You, Nescient?.

Challenging Word of the WeeK: meliorism

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Meliorism
(MEEL yuh riz um, MEE lee uh-) noun

Meliorism is the belief that everything tends to get better and better. One who lives by this doctrine is a meliorist (MEEL yuh rist, MEE lee uh-). These words are derived from Latin melior (better), the comparitive of bonus (good). The superlative is optimus (best), which gave us optimism and optimist. It may be hard to find much difference between the attitudes of meliorists and optimists, but the English novelist George Eliot (1819-1880) did find a shade of difference: The English poet A.E. Housman (1859-1936) wrote, in an autobiographical note: “I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist)…” In Latin, pejor means “worse” and pessimus means “worst.” A pejorist (whose doctrine is known as pejorism) believes that everything is getting worse; a pessimist thinks that it’s all going to be as bad as possible: superlatively bad, shall we say, in this atomic age? In any event, George Eliot thought that the world was going to get better – but not as good as possible; and that is the fine difference between meliorism and optimism. Other words from melior are ameliorate (uh MEEL yuh rate, -ee uh-), to improve; amelioration (uh meel yuh RAY shun), improvement generally, but with a special use in linguistics: semantic change to a better, i.e., more favorable meaning, the way Okie, once a pejorative term for a migrant farm worker, usually from Oklahoma, became merely a colloquial nickname for any Oklahoman, and exactly opposite to the way egregious (from Latin egregius, extraordinary, preeminent, based on prefix e-, out of, plus grege, a form of grex, herd, i.e., out of the herd) changed from preeminent to glaring, flagrant, notorious, as in an egregious blunder. But caution: meliority (meel YOR ih tee, mee lee OR-) hs nothing to do with attitudes about which way the world is moving; it is only an uncommon synonym for superiority.

My example: The death of Al-Zarqawi inspired meliorism in almost everyone except the media, members of the Democratic Party leadership and other professional pejorists.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Challenging Word of the Week: mallecho

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Mallecho

(MAL ih choh) noun



As the play within the play begins in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act III, Scene 2) and the players act out the poisoning of the king and the wooing and winning of the queen by the poisoner, Ophelia enters and cries, “What means this, my lord?” and Hamlet answers, “Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief. Thus Shakespeare himself supplies the definiition: mischief. Mallecho was derived from the Spanish noun malhecho (evil deed), base on the prefix mal-(evil) plus hecho (deed). Miching (MICH ing) is an adjective made of the present participle of the verb miche, meaning to “skulk” or “slink,” thought to be a variant of mooch (British slang for “slouch about” or “skulk,” differing from the American slang usage, to “scrounge,” both, however, coming from the same source, Middle English michen, to skulk or hide)…



Thus, miching mallecho means “sneaky mischief.” You may never run into this eloquent phrase in contemporary literature, unless you happen to read An Awkward Lie by the English whodunitist Michael Innes (b. 1906), where his detective Sir John Appleby, considering the mysterious disappearance of a corpse from a golf bunker, wonders about this “elaborate piece of miching malicho.” Malicho is a variant of mallecho, or vice versa. Some authorities say that it is vice versa, mallecho, influenced by the Spanish, being a learned emendation of malicho, the form favored by Michael Innes.



My example: The blogosphere has made it much more difficult for a miching mallecho to go unnoticed.



Hmmm, the reference above to a corpse in a golf bunker being a miching mallecho reminds me of the upcoming Second Annual Millard Fillmore Memorial KAR Nation Open Championship Golf Outing Classic (sponsored by Buick and The Kool Aid Report), known as “The MilF.” Miching? MilFing? Mischief, no doubt, will ensue.



From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.


New: I’m Number 1!

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… on the Google search list for “pecksniffian jeremiad”!

See here and here.

Excuse the foofaraw, but Yay, Me!

A Challenging Word of the Week Bonus!

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With my pending semi-seclusion (see previous post), I’ll hope to tide you over linguistically with not just one, but two Challenging Words of the Week. I’m up to the “Ls” in my book (for those paying attention, there simply wasn’t much of note to choose from in the “Ks”), and here are two words that might liven up your political discourse:

Lamia
(LAY mee uh)noun

The lamiae, in classical mythology, were a race of monsters with female heads and breasts and the bodies of serpents, who enticed young people and little children in order to devour them. The story went that the original lamia was a Queen of Libya with whom Jupiter fell in love. Juno became furiously jealous and stole the children of the queen, who went mad and vowed vengeance on all children. Lamia became a term for any vampire or she-demon. The literal meaning of lamia in Greek is “female man-eater.” In medieval times, witches were sometimes called lamiae. The English poet John Keats (1795-1821) wrote a poem entitled Lamia a short time before his untimely death. In it, a bride, recognized as a lamia by the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana (born shortly before the birth of Christ), vanishes instantaneously. Keats based his theme on an incident related in The Anatomy of Melancholy of the English churchman and writer Robert Burton (1577-1640), who took it from The Life of Apollonius by the Greek philosopher Flavius Philostratus (born c. 170). The enticement or devouring of the young has long been a theme in legend, all the way from the Minotaur of Crete to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. There were no Missing Persons Bureaus in those days to trace the Hamelin kiddies.

My example: There appears to be no shortage of women in both the conservative and liberal ranks who arouse strong feelings amongst their opposition. The next time you want to lambaste a child-devouring she-devil don’t reach for the b-word like some ‘Kos-kid imitating their Greek; go with the Greek and call her a lamia.

Lapidate
(LAP ih date) verb

To lapidate is to stone to death, an old Biblical penalty first suggested by the Lord to Moses, as set forth in Leviticus, for various crimes including adultery, incest, homosexuality, and other such naughty practices, and latterly instituted by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran for similar offenses. Jesus was gentler: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7.) Whatever one’s views may be on the question of capital punishment, lapidation (lap ih DAY shun) is beyond the pale; and never, never associate it with those honest gem cutters and stone engravers discussed under lapidary, even though it comes from the same source, lapid-, the stem of the Latin noun lapis (stone). Further, lapidate has nothing to do with dilapidate or its more familiar form, dilapidated, which comes from Latin dilapidatus, past participle of dilapidare (to demolish), based on the prefix di- (asunder; variant of dis– before certain consonants) plus the same old lapid-. From “dismantled, stone by stone,” dilapidated has come to mean “fallen into decay,” through neglect or abuse, and can apply to things having no connection with stones, from wooden houses to clothing in rags to moldy furniture and books, to say nothing of ravaged bodies.

My example:Despite the Old Testament and Ayatollah references above, lapidation today appears to be largely a Liberal activity. Or maybe it’s desired by both sides, but Liberals are just so much better at it, as anyone who has observed the lapses and subsequent, yet opposite, reprisals suffered by Lawrence Summers and Ward Churchill. The lesson: watch your step around the lamia in academia.

Challenging Word of the Week: jeremiad

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Jeremiad
(jer uh MYE ud) noun

A jeremiad is a tale of woe, a lamentation, a doleful complaint, a plea for compassion, deriving its name from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the Old Testament prophet of the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. A book of the Bible attributed to him bears his name. He called for moral reform, threatening doom if his message went unheeded. It is the prediction of doom and disaster that we associate with his name. “How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow!…She weepeth sore in the night…all her friends…are become her enemies…Jerusalem hath greviously sinned…The joy of our heart is ceased…O Lord…wherefore dost thou…forsakes us…thou art very wroth against us.” Thus spake Jeremiah; but how very boring it can be to be forced to listen to the jeremiads of one’s trouble-prone acquaintances! Jeremiah is a name given to any person who takes a gloomy view of his times and denounces what is going on in the world.

My example: Oh, the jeremiads of the modern major generals (ret.)!

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Challenging Word of the Week: ilk

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Ilk
(ilk) noun

The common use of ilk is in the phrase of that ilk, and, correctly employed, has a distinctly limited use. It applies properly only when the surname of a person is the same as the name of his estate or the place he’s from. In a series of letters to The Times (London), Sir Iain Moncreiffe, of Easter Moncreiffe, Perthshire, signed himself “Iain Moncreiffe, Of That Ilk,” meaning “Iain Moncreiffe of Moncreiffe.” Quoting from British English, A to Zed (Facts on File, 1987) by this author:

A friend of the author named Hector Cameron was a Cameron of Cameron, and once announced himself over the telephone as ‘Cameron of that ilk.’ The uneducated (at that time) author, to his shame, ascribed it to drink. There are MacDonalds of that ilk (MacDonalds of MacDonald), Guthries of that ilk (Guthries of Guthrie) and so on. From a Sassenach misunderstanding of usage, ilk has acquired the meaning ‘sort’ or’kind’; used generally in a pejorative sense: Al Capone, and people of that ilk, or even (heaven forfend!) Freudians (or communists, etc.) and their ilk.

The use of ilk is now expanded to include “family,” “class,” or “set” as well as “kind.” Fowler says of ilk:

This SLIPSHOD EXTENSION has become so common that the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Supp(lement) was constrained to add to its definitions ‘also by further extension, often in trivial use, — kind, sort.’

The COD (Concise Oxford Dictionary) calls it “vulgar.” Ilk is, via Middle English ilke, from Old English ilca. Incidentally, the adjective Sassenach mentioned above is defined in British English, A to Zed as follows:

From the Gaelic for Saxon, an opprobrious term used by Scots, and sometimes the Irish as well, to designate and derogate the English.

My example: While we might figuratively lump all fast food brands into a common group, grammatically only the red-headed clown can accurately describe himself as “Ronald McDonald of that ilk.”

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Challenging Word of the Week: haruspex

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Haruspex
(huh RUS peks, HAIR uh speks) noun

This was the title, in ancient Rome, of a lower order of priests who prophesied by examining the entrails of animals killed in sacrifice. The custom was handed down by the Etruscans. The practice is known as haruspication (hair us puh KAY shun) or haruspicy (huh RUS puh see). The verb is haruspicate (huh RUS puh kate). Haruspex is a Latin word, base on Etruscan haru, Latin hira (entrail) plus specere (to look at: spexi means “I have inspected’). The Roman Censor (a government official) Cato (234-149 B.C.) was not impressed by this type of divination. He said: “I wonder how one haruspex can keep from laughing when he sees another.” This made him very unpopular with haruspices.

My example: The modern haruspex has replaced animal entrails with complex computer models for economic forecasts. The resulting prophesies, while similarly apt to be self-fulfilling, aren’t necessarily more accurate — but they are certainly less messy. Today’s haruspices, like their earlier counterparts, have perfected the ability to take each other seriously, at least in public.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.

Challenging Word of the Week: gargantuan

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Gargantuan
(gar GAN choo un) adjective

Anyone or anything described as gargantuan is huge, gigantic, vast, or of enormous proportions. The adjective, often capitalized, is derived from Gargantua, the amiable giant king whose exploits are recorded in the novel of that name, one of the two great satirical works by Francois Rabelais (1494-1553). His books, full of coarse, broad, boisterous wit and humor, are characterized by the type of licentious language associated with the adjective Rabelaisian. Gargantua was noted for his incredibly voracious appetite (garganta is Spanish for “gullet”; cf. French gargoille, throat, and English derivatives gargle and gargoyle), so great that on one occasion the insatiable guzzler swallowed whole five pilgrims – with their staves! – mixed in a salad. In Shakespeare’s As You Like It (Act III, Scene 2), Rosalind asks Celia a torrent of questions about Orlando and winds up: “Answer me in one word.” Celia replies: “You must borrow me* Gargantua’s mouth first: ‘tis a word too great for any mouth of this age’s size…” One can speak of the gargantuan appetite of a trencherman, the gargantuan length of one of those endless historical novels, or the gargantuan task of cleaning up after a hurricane.

* (Note: Shakespearean scholars have apparently overlooked this indication of the bard’s Minnesota upbringing. NW)

My example: As with Gargantua, the gargantuan federal budget could stand to mix in a salad.

From the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House. I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it. Previous words in this series can be found under the appropriate Category heading in the right-hand sidebar.